Poem

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other.
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

Folks I’ve got them hungry blues
And nothin’ in this to lose
People tellin’ me to choose
Between dyin’ and lyin’ and keep
on cryin’

Tired of them hungry blues
Listen ain’t you heard the news
There’s another thing to choose
A brand new world clean and fine
Where nobody’s hungry
And there’s no color line
A thing like that’s worth
anybody dyin’
I ain’t got a thing to lose
But them doggone hungry blues